What is there to tell of my travels in Russia? My duties as an interpreter suddenly lifted me from the mundane and dropped me above the clouds into the Russian court. Accompanying the count’s party, I went to St. Petersburg, where I was overwhelmed by the ornate architecture of the palace, which represented for me the greatest splendors of Paris transported into the midst of ice and snow. Above all, I remember the countless flickering yellow candles, the light reflected by the multitude of decorations and epaulets, and the fluttering fans of the court ladies, who forgot the cold outside as they sat in the warmth from the exquisitely carved and inlaid fireplaces. As I was the most fluent French speaker in the party, I had to circulate between host and guest and interpret for them.
But I had not forgotten Elise. How could I? She sent me letters every day. On the day I left, she had wanted to avoid the unaccustomed sadness of sitting alone by lamplight and so had talked late into the night at a friend’s house. Then, feeling tired, she returned home and immediately went to bed. Next morning, she wondered if she had not just dreamed she was alone. But when she got up, her depression and sense of loneliness were worse than the time when she had been scratching a living and had not known where the next meal was coming from. This was what she told me in her first letter.
Later letters seemed to be written in great distress, and each of them began in the same way.
“Ah! Only now do I realize the depth of my love for you. As you say, you have no close relatives at home, you will stay here if you find you can make a good living, won’t you? My love must tie you here to me. Even if that proves impossible and you have to return home, I could easily come with my mother. But where would we get the money for the fare? I had always intended to stay here and wait for the day you became famous, whatever I had to do. But the pain of separation grows stronger every day, even though you are only on a short trip and have only been away about twenty days. It was a mistake to have thought that parting was just a passing sorrow. My pregnancy is at last beginning to be obvious, so you cannot reject me now, whatever happens. I quarrel a lot with Mother. But she has given in, now she sees how much more determined I am than I used to be. When I travel home with you, she’s talking of going to stay with some distant relatives who live on a farm near Stettin. If, as you say in your last letter, you are doing important work for the minister, we can somehow manage the fare. How I long for the day you return to Berlin.”
It was only after reading this letter that I really understood my predicament. How could I have been so insensitive! I had been proud to have made a decision about my own course of action and that of others unrelated to me. But it had been made in entirely favorable, rather than adverse, conditions. When I tried to clarify my relationship with others, the emotions that I had formerly trusted became confused.
I was already on very good terms with the count. But in my shortsightedness I only took into consideration the duties that I was then undertaking. The gods might have known how this was connected to my hopes for the future, but I never gave it a thought. Was my passion cooling? When Aizawa had first recommended me, I had felt that the count’s confidence would be hard to gain, but now I had to some extent won his trust. When Aizawa had said things like “If we continue to work together after you return to Japan,” I wondered whether he had really been blaring that this was what the count was saying. It was true that Aizawa was my friend, but he would not have been able to tell me openly, since it was an official matter. Now that I thought about it, I wondered whether he had perhaps told the count what I had rashly promised him—that I was going to sever my connections with Elise.
When I first came to Germany, I thought that I had discovered my true nature, and I swore never to be used as a machine again. But perhaps it was merely the pride of a bird that had been given momentary freedom to flap its wings and yet still had its legs bound. There was no way I could loose the bonds. The rope had first been in the hands of my department head, and now, alas, it was in the hands of the count.
It happened to be New Year’s Day when I returned to Berlin with the count’s party. I left them at the station and took a cab home. In Berlin no one sleeps on New Year’s Eve, and it is the custom to lie in late the next morning. Every single house was quiet. The snow on the road had frozen hard into ruts in the bitter cold and shone brightly in the sunlight. The cab turned into Klosterstrasse and pulled up at the entrance to the house. I heard a window open but saw nothing from inside the cab. I got the driver to take my bag and was just about to climb the steps when Elise came flying down to meet me. She cried out and flung her arms around my neck. At this the driver was a little startled and mumbled something in his beard that I could not hear.
“Oh! Welcome home! I would have died if you had not returned!” she cried.
Up to now I had prevaricated. At times the thought of Japan and the desire to seek fame seemed to overcome my love, but at this precise moment all my hesitation left me and I hugged her. She laid her head on my shoulder and wept tears of happiness.
“Which floor do I take it to?” growled the driver as he hurried up the stairs with the luggage.
I gave a few silver coins to her mother, who had come to the door to meet me, and asked her to pay the driver. Elise held me by the hand and hurried into the room. I was surprised to see a pile of white cotton and lace lying on the table. She laughed and pointed to the pile.
“What do you think of all the preparations?” she said.
She picked up a piece of material and I saw it was a baby’s diaper.
“You cannot imagine how happy I am!” she said. “I wonder if our child will have your dark eyes. Ah, your eyes that I have only been able to dream about. When it’s born, you will do the right thing, won’t you? You’ll give it your name and no one else’s, won’t you?”
She hung her head.
“You may laugh at me for being silly, but I will be so happy the day we go to church.”
Her uplifted eyes were full of tears.
I did not call on the count for two or three days because I thought he might be tired from the journey, and so I stayed home. Then one evening, a messenger came bearing an invitation. When I arrived, the count greeted me warmly and thanked me for my work in Russia. He then asked me whether I felt like returning to Japan with him. I knew so much and my knowledge of languages alone was of great value, he said. He had thought that seeing I had been so long in Germany, I might have some ties here, but he had asked Aizawa and had been relieved to hear that this was not the case.
I could not possibly deny what appeared to be the situation. I was shaken but of course found it impossible to contradict what Aizawa had told him. If I did not take this chance, I might lose not only my homeland but also the very means by which I might retrieve my good name. I was suddenly struck by the thought that I might die in this sea of humanity, in this vast European capital. I showed my lack of moral fiber and agreed to go.
It was shameless. What could I say to Elise when I returned? As I left the hotel my mind was in indescribable turmoil. I wandered, deep in thought, not caring where I was going. Time and time again I was cursed at by the drivers of carriages that I bumped into, and I jumped back startled. After a while I looked around and found I was in the Tiergarten. I half collapsed onto a bench by the side of the path. My head was on fire and felt as if someone were pounding it with a hammer as I leaned back. How long did I lie there like a corpse? The terrible cold creeping into the marrow of my bones woke me up. It was nighttime, and the thickly falling snow had piled up an inch high on my shoulders and the peak of my cap.
It must have been past eleven. Even the tracks of the horse-drawn trams along Mohabit and Karlstrasse were buried under the snow, and the gas lamps around the Brandenburg Gate gave out a bleak light. My feet were frozen stiff when I tried to get up, and I had to rub them with my hands before I could move.
I walked slowly and it must have been past midnight when I got to Klosterstrasse. I don’t know how I got there. It was earl
y January, and the bars and tea shops on Unter den Linden must have been full, but I remember nothing of that. I was completely obsessed by the thought that I had committed an unforgivable crime.
In the fourth-floor attic Elise was evidently not yet asleep, for a bright gleam of light shone out into the night sky. The falling snowflakes were like a flock of small white birds, and the light kept on disappearing and reappearing as if the plaything of the wind. As I went in through the door I realized how weary I was. The pain in my joints was so unbearable that I half crawled up the stairs. I went through the kitchen, opened the door of the room, and stumbled inside. Elise was sewing diapers by the table and turned around.
“What have you been doing?” she gasped. “Just look at you!”
She had good reason to be shocked. My face was as pale as a corpse. I had lost my cap somewhere on the way, and my hair was in a frightful mess. My clothes were torn and dirty from the muddy snow as I had stumbled many times along the road.
I remember trying to reply, but I could say nothing. Unable to stand because my knees were shaking so violently, I tried to grab a chair, but then I fell to the floor.
It was some weeks later that I regained consciousness, l had just babbled in a high fever while Elise tended me. Then one day Aizawa had come to visit me, saw for himself what I had hidden from him, and arranged matters by telling the count only that I was ill. When I first set eyes on Elise again, tending me at the bedside, I was shocked at her altered appearance. She had become terribly thin and her bloodshot eyes were sunk into her gray cheeks. With Aizawa’s help she had not wanted for daily necessities, it was true, but this same benefactor had spiritually killed her.
As he told me later, she heard from Aizawa about the promise I had given him and how I had agreed to the count’s proposal that evening. She had jumped up from her chair, her face ashen pale, and crying out “Toyotarō! How could you deceive me!” she had suddenly collapsed. Aizawa had called her mother, and together they had put her in bed. When she awoke some time later, her eyes were fixed in a stare, and she could not recognize those around her. She cried out my name, abused me, tore her hair, and bit the coverlet. Then she suddenly seemed to remember something and started to look for it. Everything her mother gave her she threw away except the diapers that were on the table. These she stared at for a moment, then pressed them to her face and burst into tears.
From that time on, she was never violent, but her mind was almost completely unhinged and she became as simpleminded as a child. The doctor said there was no hope of recovery, for it was an illness called paranoia that had been brought on by sudden excessive emotion. They tried to remove her to the Dalldorf Asylum, but she cried out and refused to go. She would continually clasp a diaper to her breast and bring it out to look at, and this seemed to make her content. Although she did not leave my sickbed, she did not seem really aware of what was going on. Just occasionally she would repeat the word “medicine” as if remembering it.
I recovered from my illness completely. How often did I hold her living corpse in my arms and shed bitter tears? When I left with the count for the journey back to Japan, I discussed the matter with Aizawa and gave her mother enough to eke out a bare existence; I also left some money to pay for the birth of the child that I had left in the womb of the poor mad girl.
Friends like Aizawa Kenkichi are rare indeed, and yet to this very day there remains a part of me that curses him.
SAN’YŪTEI ENCHŌ
San’yūtei Enchō (1839–1900) was one of the brightest stars of the Meiji story telling performance art. He became popular in the early 1860s and then introduced adaptations of Western novels and tales with political themes, just at the height of the so-called Freedom and People’s Rights movement during the 1870s.
Enchō’s chilling tale The Ghost Tale of the Peony Lantern (Kaidan botandōrō) has the distinction of being the first printed example of stenographed oral literature (sokkibon) in Japan. The story is based on a classical Chinese tale of the Ming dynasty reworked in a Japanese context and set in the seventeenth century.
Enchō created the oral text of The Ghost Tale of the Peony Lantern while performing in Tokyo’s Asakusa district at the beginning of his career, and he continued to polish it throughout his lifetime. Structurally, two separate plots emerge in alternating installments until they join midway in the story, a narrative technique that came to be known as “the Enchō mandala.” The first plot concerns a karmic bond between two young lovers, Hagiwara Shinzaburō and Iijima Tsuyu. After an intense but fleeting encounter with Shinzaburō, Tsuyu dies of a broken heart when her father refuses to let the two meet again. Tsuyu’s ghost, followed by her peony lantern–carrying maid, returns from the grave to claim her (still living) lover. The second plot involves a loyal servant avenging the deceitful murder of his master. Enchō constructed his tale at a time when ghost stories were very popular in the Kantō area, and his combining a ghost story with a traditional tale of vengeance (adauchi) resulted in a suspenseful and macabre story that, as kabuki, is popular even today. The original transcribed text consisted of thirteen installments, each of which contained enough episodes for several nights. The excerpt presented here, section 4, comes from the second installment. Note the implicit reference to the previous installment in the opening paragraph, as well as the “cliff-hanger” ending, both typical elements of oral narrative.
THE GHOST TALE OF THE PEONY LANTERN (KAIDAN BOTANDŌRŌ)
Performed by San’yūtei Enchō
Transcribed by Wakabayashi Kanzō
Translated by J. Scott Miller
Section 4
As arranged, Hagiwara Shinzaburō went with Yamamoto Shijō to view the plum blossoms at Garyūbai. On the way home they happened to pass by the Iijima family villa, and the image of Iijima’s daughter, Tsuyu, flashed across Shinzaburō’s mind. During that brief first encounter they had merely touched hands as she passed him the hand towel, but his longing was stronger than if they had spent a night together. In the olden days people often took these things very seriously. Why, at that time a gentleman might half-teasingly flirt with a young woman: “Say, why don’t you come with me? We’ll just have a little nap.” If the woman replied, “Oh, you’re such a tease!” the man would respond, “Now you’ve done it; you’ve gone and spoiled everything! If you aren’t interested, just say so! You don’t want me, so I’ll just find someone who does!” and he’d be ready to storm off to find someone else or to sulk. Shinzaburō had done nothing more than touch Tsuyu’s hand, yet he yearned for her the same as if they were passionate lovers. But being the fine gentleman he was, he would not go to visit Tsuyu alone. He realized that if he went alone and by chance be discovered by one of Iijima’s guards, the consequences would be severe. So he waited anxiously for Shijō to come by so he could immediately suggest that they go together to pay Tsuyu a call. For some reason, however, Shijō’s regular visits ceased abruptly. As a go-between, Shijō was actually very shrewd and had earlier noticed something strange going on between Shinzaburō and Tsuyu when she passed him the towel, so he stayed away from the two. Because of their unequal status, if anything were discovered, the consequences for him would be catastrophic. He might even have to pay for it with his bald head! He was in a dangerous position and if one plays with fire, one’s going to get burned! Realizing that it was best for the lovers to remain apart, Shijō avoided them. So for the rest of the Second Month, and the Third and Fourth as well, Shinzaburō saw no sign of Shijō, and as a result he spent his time alone, brooding and longing for Tsuyu. He even stopped eating, something Hanzō, the renter of one of his outbuildings, noticed when he came to visit one day.
HANZŌ: Sir, what’s gotten into you lately? You’re not eating your dinner, and you even missed your lunch today.
SHINZABURŌ: Well, I just can’t eat, that’s all.
HANZŌ: But you’ve got to eat! It’s a downright shame, someone young as you eating just a bowl and a half. Why, I need at least five or six helpings of
those jumbo-size bowls—heaped up, too—before I feel like I’ve had anything to eat! And sir, forgive me for saying so, but you never even leave the house. When was it . . . three months ago? You and Mr. Yamamoto went out to look at the plum blossoms or something—you made some kind of pun out of it, as I recall. If you don’t try to get your health back, it’ll be the death of you!
SHINZABURŌ: Hanzō . . . you like to fish, don’t you?
HANZŌ: Do I like to fish . . . I’d rather fish than eat!
SHINZABURŌ: Really? Good, then why don’t we go fishing!
HANZŌ: But, as I recall, you don’t even like to fish. . . .
SHINZABURŌ: Well . . . I just had this sudden . . . urge, that’s all.
HANZŌ: So you got this “urge,” huh? Where exactly do you plan to go?
SHINZABURŌ: Well, I think we should go over to the Yokogawa, in Ryūjima. I hear they’re biting over there. What do you think?
HANZŌ: Yokogawa, you say? Hmmm . . . that runs into the Nakagawa, doesn’t it? What’re they catching out there?
SHINZABURŌ: Oh, well . . . I hear they’re catching lots of bonito!
HANZŌ: Don’t be a fool! Do you think you can catch bonito in a river? At the most you might catch a baby mullet or perhaps a bitterling. In any case, if you’ll come along, I’d be glad to go fishing with you.
So they prepared a lunch and put some saké in a bamboo flask, then went to rent a boat from the boatmen near the old Shōhei Bridge in Kanda. Fishing, however, was the furthest thing from Shinzaburō’s mind; all he could think about was Tsuyu, the Iijima villa, and seeing his beloved, even if it were only a glimpse of her through the outside fence. He gulped down all the saké from the flask, getting quite tipsy, then fell asleep right there on the boat while Hanzō fished the day away. When he noticed that Shinzaburō was asleep, he spoke to him.
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series) Page 5
